Lately I silenced my PC. After all it was a great success as I managed to suspend my HDD.
Now I'm looking to upgrade my 8800 GTS 320. It not only makes to much noise to my 'new standard', it is also starting to get a little slow to my liking. The card will probably have great difficulty with games like GTA IV and the upcoming Empire: Total War (which I definately will be playing!). I think I will go with the Radeon HD 4850. Will this however be enough of an perfomance increase to compensate for the investion?
To silence the HD 4850 I will buy the AC accellero S1 rev. 2. I can run my HD 4850 passive with that cooler right?
My Enermax Liberty 400W is able to handle my current setup. The 8800 GTS draws more power than the HD 4850 so my PSU will do ok, right?

Now I'm looking to upgrade my 8800 GTS 320. It not only makes to much noise to my 'new standard', it is also starting to get a little slow to my liking. The card will probably have great difficulty with games like GTA IV and the upcoming Empire: Total War (which I definately will be playing!).

Wouldn't it then make sense to buy those games first before you upgrade?

Then you would see for yourself if you actually do need the upgrade for performance reasons, instead of guessing.

The Accelero S1 rev2 will fit an HD4580, but said graphics card is not officially on Arctic Cooling's compatibility list, therefore you will run into a few snags.

Firstly, the S1 will have a hard time cooling a HD4850 completely passively (speaking from experience), unless you have considerable airflow around it from nearby fans. Strap a 120mm fan on it with some zipties if it gets too hot. Even a low speed fan running at 5V will cool the card adequately. Or get the Turbo module from Arctic Cooling if you're not into ghetto mods

Also, the vrm cooler supplied with the Accelero S1 (either revision) does not fit the HD4850. The card runs fine without the vrm cooler when a fan is blowing on it, but I wouldn't trust it in a passive setup.

And lastly, the ramsinks that come with the cooler are quite tall. One of them has clearance issues on the memory chip nearest to the heatpipes. You can move the ramsink further off so that it clears the heatpipe, but it will only cover half of the chip. Not ideal, but still better than the rubbish stock cooler . Or you could just put some lower profile ramsinks on.

As noted above, the VRM sinks don't fit. Atleast they don't fit my asus which isn't a reference design. The VRMs on the asus are arranged in a group of three. The included VRMs are long and narrow. They can cover 2 of them, but not all three in the group. To get around this, I bought some zalman ram sinks. Try to check out a picture of the card you buy first, so you will know if you will need new sinks or if the card already has one. I have read some stories of people of cutting down the stock heatsink to fit.

Also as noted above, the included ram sink doesn't fit on the chip closest to the PCIe slot. To get around this, I used one of the zalman ram sinks just on that chip.

My card idles at around 34C. Not sure if thats good. About 30 minutes into my first session of COD5, my video just died. Computer was still running but no video. I am not sure what that means. Could be that the zalman sinks on the VRMs didn't work well enough. Its working again, and since then I have ziptied a 120 MM fan to it. I haven't had a chance to see if that will help with gaming though. Hopefully it will.

I have a Diamond which had 75 degrees on idle and 90 degrees on load with the default fan speed.
It was hot but didn't have any stability issue.
Then I put Accelero S1 which gave me 50 degrees on idle and 60 degrees on load.

However, it became very unstable on many games which didn't make sense since my card was cooler with Accelero S1.
So I decided put the turbo module to cool it down further.
I acheived 35 degrees on idle and 48 degrees on load, only 10 degrees down.
But it became totally stable now.

I believe the issue was something to do with the BIOS of GPU.
Since I had to remove the stock cooler and stock fan, the BIOS might think I don't have a fan.
So it might shut down GPU if it goes over 60 degrees to protect GPU.
Just my theory though.

So I do not recomment on going passive with 4850.
Put a fan and you will be okay.

So running the HD 4850 passive with the accellero S1 isn't a good idea. What about the passive out-of-the-box HD 4850 from gigabyte. Bit-tech reviewed it. They're very positive, but the card is also more expensive (also due to the 1GB RAM). Are there any silent out-of-the-box HD 4850's with active cooling that are cheaper than the gigabyte?

So running the HD 4850 passive with the accellero S1 isn't a good idea. What about the passive out-of-the-box HD 4850 from gigabyte. Bit-tech reviewed it. They're very positive, but the card is also more expensive (also due to the 1GB RAM). Are there any silent out-of-the-box HD 4850's with active cooling that are cheaper than the gigabyte?

If there is then I sure as helkl haven't seen one. They're mostly either very hot or very loud.

I'd get (well .. I actually did :d)a Sapphire 4850 with the dual slot cooler and replace it with the Accelero S1. Sapphire already put an adequate VRM sink on so that won't be a problem and the RAMsinks fit just fine.

So running the HD 4850 passive with the accellero S1 isn't a good idea. What about the passive out-of-the-box HD 4850 from gigabyte. Bit-tech reviewed it. They're very positive, but the card is also more expensive (also due to the 1GB RAM). Are there any silent out-of-the-box HD 4850's with active cooling that are cheaper than the gigabyte?

Buy any cheapest 4850 that has VRM sinks.
Then you can put Accelero S1 with supplied RAM sinks.
Just don't forget to put a fan, or buy a turbo module with it.
Of course, Twin Turbo version will be the best though.

GTA IV doesn't run as good as I hoped on my 8800 GTS. I'm only able to play it at 1156*7xx resolution (native 20" 1650x1080) and other settings medium/low. I'm not even able to play it at any higher details... So I'll probably buy the HD 4850 in the near future. If I buy this Sapphire version (but than in the NL ) will that be ok with the VRM and RAM cooling in combination with the accelero S1 without having to do any (ghetto-) mods?

I was in the same position (8800GT not giving me good performance under GTA4), so I searched for a new video card in the last 2 weeks..

Most people I talked to mentioned to me that it would not be a very worthy upgrade to go from a 8800GT to a 4850. Also; I had the HIS IceQ4 model in my mind, but I've heard here that it's not as quiet as I thought it to be. So, I turned my eyes to the 4870's.

The 4870's using reference cooling were generally not regarded as "quiet"; I can slow the fan down but then the chip would overheat. I could not find a non-reference 4870 with quieter cooling either; the Palit/Gainward has a noisy 7 cm fan (although I hear it can be modded), the Sapphire Toxic is even noisier than reference, and the HIS 4870 IceQ 4 Turbo is yet to be made available.

nVidia GTX260 - 216's -from what I learned- are considered superior to the 4870 in terms of performance and noise; but by now we're talking about more money than I had in mind (in Turkey a Zotac GTX260-216 costs about 400 $, including taxes). Also, the 55nm GTX200's are around the corner so I would probably regret the upgrade in 3 months.

So I decided to stick to the 8800GT I have now, and look for ways to improve performance with it. I installed the GTA4 patch, switched to the nVidia driver released mainly for GTA4 and overclocked the video card a bit.. And now I can say it's playable for me (1680x1050). I would appreciate higher FPS and better graphics, but the performance is enough not to take away the enjoyment from the game.

I see that you have tried GTA4 with the 8800GTS and found it not so much fun even at 1156x7**. The "high" texture detail setting requires a video card memory larger than 512 MB, so you'd need a card with 640, 768 or 1 GB RAM to see "high" texture detail. (A 3870 X2 1 GB won't do, for technical reasons.) I'm a bit surprised at this, and this makes me think that you have a 320 MB 8800GTS.

with the 320 MB 8800GTS it might make sense to switch to a 4850; but I would still try to get something better. If you got a GTX260 the PSU might be on the edge, though.

I'd advise that you apply the patch for GTA4 and switch to the nVidia drivers for GTA4. If you'd consider overclocking, it could help too. Then maybe the game might play a bit better.

I think the HD 4870 and the GTX260 are a little bit to expensive for me. I want to stay under â‚¬/$ 200...
Is the Geforce 9800 GTX+ a good alternative to the HD 4850? And how silent is the stock cooler of the card or are there good aftermarket coolers for the card?

I think the HD 4870 and the GTX260 are a little bit to expensive for me. I want to stay under â‚¬/$ 200...Is the Geforce 9800 GTX+ a good alternative to the HD 4850? And how silent is the stock cooler of the card or are there good aftermarket coolers for the card?

9800GTX+ is very fine choice. Its performance is pretty much tied with HD 4850 in performance. Stock cooler keeps card cool and is relatively quiet but as noise is subjective you really need to hear that yourself, but GTX+'s cooler is light years better than Ati's...

_________________If seeing is believing, how can blind person believe in anything?Maturity is just not experience in life but also ability to make compromises.

Wouldn't this be the ultimate solution than? It will only cost me â‚¬ 153 and it has a AC Twin Turbo cooler and as evelid said:

evilid wrote:

Of course, Twin Turbo version will be the best though.

True?
Or would anyone advise me to get the 9800 GTX+ with 1 GB RAM (Zotac: â‚¬ 166) and than just hope the cooler is silent enough to my liking?
To be honoust, at the moment I prefer nvidia because of the physX support.

I have a reference 4850 with S1. 500rpm slipstream is enough to keep the VRM's cool without heatsinks.
In GTA4 i can play at native res (1680x1050) on medium settings. If thats a big enough jump from your old card for you to make the jump then go ahead.

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